


Life is a Dance Floor

by bessyboo, thisissirius



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Audio Format: M4B, Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Community: pod-together, F/M, POV First Person, Podfic, Podfic Length: 1-1.5 Hours
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 17:00:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/902696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bessyboo/pseuds/bessyboo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisissirius/pseuds/thisissirius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time I met Jonathan Toews, he let a door close in my face. Not one of those metaphorical doors that get shut ‘cause I’m a girl in the NHL, but a <i>literal</i> door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life is a Dance Floor

**Author's Note:**

> **Siri's Notes:** So Bess and I decided we'd do the pod_together challenge and write something that worked for both of us. Apparently that's girl!Kaner. This is the first time I have ever written genderswap, and as you can see from the tags, it's also first person. This isn't going to work for everybody and I respect that. You can make your own judgements about whether or not I managed to get Kaner's voice right or not, but I like the end product and I'm happy with my first foray into genderswap. As usual, Bess gets kudos for actually betaing this fic AND recording the podfic AND listening to me moan and rant my way through the entire fic. She probably deserves more than just kudos for putting up with me in writing mode, TBH. That was longer than I wanted it to, but whatever. I hope you enjoy the fic and please, please, please listen to the audio. Bess did a great job giving Kaner voice, and I love it. 
> 
> **Bess's Notes:** So basically how this went was like two months ago I was like SIRI YOU SHOULD WRITE SOMETHING FOR ME FOR POD TOGETHER :D and she was all, OK!!! And then I was like, YOU SHOULD WRITE ME GIRL KANER :D and she was like, um, no. BUT THEN she came back and was like WELL MAYBE. And so I was like AND YOU SHOULD MAKE IT FIRST PERSON :D and she was like uhhhhh.... but then came back like a champ and was like I'LL TRY IT???
> 
> So basically what I'm saying is, this is all my fault, you should totally blame me. Also this was super fun and Siri is the best <3
> 
>  
> 
> We owe HUGE thanks to [argentumlupine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/argentumlupine/pseuds/argentumlupine) for helping with a giant chunk of the audio editing. THANKS, JD! Additional thanks to [War_Kitten](http://archiveofourown.org/users/War_Kitten/pseuds/War_Kitten) for hair help (aka pin curl skillz) & [platinumvampyr](http://platinumvampyr.tumblr.com/) for photography for the cover art.
> 
> Song used (and title is from) _God is a DJ_ by P!nk. Cover art  & podbook compiled by bessyboo.
> 
>  
> 
> **DISCLAIMER: We are not actually Kaner (obviously); this is written from her POV. Some of the things she thinks, we ABSOLUTELY wouldn't. _The views expressed here are not necessarily our views._**

**A less-than-two-minute plea for why you should give the audio version of this a try,  
** **if you were about to skip over it to just read the text:**  
  
[Direct MP3 Link](http://bessyboo.parakaproductions.com/Miscellaneous/PodTogether2013TwoMinutePlea.mp3)

  
_Audio Length: 1:18:21_

**MP3 [54.3 MB]:** [Download](http://bessyboo.parakaproductions.com/My%20Podfic/MP3s/Life%20Is%20A%20Dance%20Floor.mp3) (right-click/save as)  
 **Audiobook (M4B) [46.6 MB]:** [Download](http://bessyboo.parakaproductions.com/My%20Podfic/Podbooks/Life%20is%20a%20Dance%20Floor.m4b) (right-click/save as)

  
  
  
  


* * *

#  **ATTENTION!** You are about to read a transcript of a work that was meant to be experienced as audio. Please be aware that _by reading this work without listening to the audio component, you are missing a key aspect of this fanwork_.

* * *

  
  
  
  


The first time I met Jonathan Toews, he let a door close in my face. Not one of those metaphorical doors that get shut ‘cause I’m a girl in the NHL, but a _literal_ door. The fact that he kept walking and didn’t even apologize for that shit was kinda refreshing, even if he was still a complete tool. 

I wasn’t the first woman to be drafted into the NHL. Pavla Datsyuk was drafted like ten years before me and she was fucking amazing at stickhandling. Clearly she was awesome, and she was totally my idol. I was determined to be in the NHL like her, and people would have to fuckin’ recognize. My parents were supportive, but they’d always tell me that I had to have like, a back up plan or something. They didn’t stand in my way or whatever, they were just worried that being a girl would end up ruining my chances. Tommy’s dad drove him down to _Albany_ for tournaments and never told him that he should have a back up plan, and you can bet anything my parents wouldn’t have if I’d been born a boy. I had a huge fight with them one time about not supporting me or believing I could make it, and it was totally embarrassing for everyone involved, but my grandpa stepped in and made everything awesome. He used take me out in the backyard and took me to games, and made sure I always had everything I needed. He knew I loved playing hockey and didn’t care that I wasn’t a dude, I would make it just the same.

I was going to the NHL, someone was gonna to draft me, and it would be _baller_.

\---

I don’t know who was more surprised that I was drafted first overall, the city of Columbus, or me. Not that I thought I wasn’t going to make it or whatever, but I was drafted _first_. Not even Datsyuk had done that. Nobody took it seriously, ‘course, ‘cause it was Chicago and I was a shortass even by guy standards. Plus I was, you know, a _woman_.

But I was fucking drafted. 

It’s not like getting drafted gave me an automatic spot on the roster. I could’ve ended up in Rockford and forgotten about soon as I was drafted, but fuck that, I wasn’t about to get sidelined. I didn’t get drafted first overall only to slack off and get sent down to the farm team. 

Then I met Jonathan Toews, he slammed a literal door in my face, and Savvy put us on the same line. 

You’d think those things have nothing in common, but you’ve never met Jonny. I used to think he was a douche, but I know better now. Course, that doesn’t give him a free pass for slamming a door in my face and treating me like I wasn’t even there. He’s pretty stuffy and shit, serious to the point of being a robot (he’s not really, but it’s hilarious as shit to call him that and watch his face contort like he’s sucking lemons or what the fuck ever). Good at hockey, though. He gets points, I guess, for that first day in the locker room. Some of the guys in the NHL are so completely backwards in their opinions of having tits and a sweet ass (mine, not Jonny’s) in the locker room, and I don’t normally care, but this wasn’t like being in the London locker room, with Gags and Serge. This was different; this was like, huge guys treating me like I was some kind of weird _thing_ invading their locker space. There was Sharpy, I guess, and Seabs and Duncs and—okay, there were a lot of guys who weren’t weird, but some of them looked at me like I didn’t belong, which was _bullshit_ ; hello, first in the 2007 draft, thank you. Still, Jonny was pretty insistent that they could mock me about my height (the dick) and about my questionable shooting skills (I could outshoot him blindfolded), but not about the fact that I was a woman. 

The point _is_ , Jonny’s a complete and total douchecanoe, but he’s totally awesome about the fact that I’ve got tits and not a dick. Then again, having him seen him (not) score, I don’t think he really knows there’s a difference between the two. 

The day he shut the door in my face was the first day of training camp. So what if he didn’t actively mean to slam it in my face, it was still a douchey thing to do. When we made it into the locker room, they had a separate place for me in the showers, not that I listened for the most part, and ended up showering in my bra and panties for like, the first two weeks just to mess with everyone. Of course, Martin and Adrian both put a stop to that pretty quickly, and I was relegated to the “girls” showers, from where Sharpy and Burs would usually mock me for my height, and for being the youngest, and everything else they deemed worthy of mocking. 

Jonny and I were pretty much thrown together from the start. After letting the door slam in my face, we didn’t talk until I was kitted up and sitting on the bench. He kept staring at the side of my face with his creepy devoid-of-any-emotion expression that he sometimes gets on the bench, and I kinda lost my shit a little. 

“What?”

He just kept staring at me, and I was afraid for a while that he’d practiced on his own the night before or something and hit his head. Concussions are serious shit, okay? But then he just grinned, like he was the best fucking person on the planet, and hit my shin with his stick. “You better bring it today.”

I raised my eyebrow. “That’s what you’re going with? Really?”

He looked confused, like my put down of his ridiculous challenge was difficult to understand. “I’m just saying,” he said, rallying quickly. “You were passable at the WJC.”

Okay, first, I played in the _women’s_ WJC, so the fact that he even knew about my performance was shocking, and b) I was fucking _awesome_ , so he was going to eat those words. “I’ll show you passable.”

I kinda did. Well, we both showed each other, and I guess you could say that competition between us during training camp followed us for the rest of our careers, but during those few weeks, we stood out.

Training camp was—well, to say it was tough would be an understatement. Anyone that tells you the jump from juniors to the NHL isn’t hard is a big fuckin’ liar. We’re talking bag skates until you want to throw up, so many suicide runs you realize how they got their name, and going through different techniques so often you start doing them in your sleep. No lie, I would wake up stickhandling like a boss, tangled up in a duvet. That shit is weird. (Okay, this might be a slight exaggeration and we only did basic training, but it felt like I was going to die.) 

This was all before my parents called up Bowman and asked him to take care of me. Like I needed it. I was grateful, because living alone when you’re new to Chicago and only eighteen is pretty fucking daunting, but it still didn’t do me any favours. The press had a field day with that one; the little woman on the team, having to stay in a house with the Assistant General Manager because he was like, _protecting_ me or some shit. Never mind that I wasn’t the damsel the press made me out to be. 

I could stand up for my-fucking-self.

\---

You know what every rookie wants? The Calder fucking trophy. I mean, it was the kind of thing I used to dream about as a kid. Getting the most points of anyone in my rookie season and letting them all know that I was gonna be baller and they needed to watch the fuck out; I was _coming_. I wanted it for more than that, though. How fucking sweet would it be if a _woman_ got that trophy and led the entire NHL—a league of men—in points and scoring, and being a total badass at hockey.

Course Jonny wasn’t about to let me off easy. He wanted the Calder as much as I did, maybe more, ‘cause he’s as competitive as shit about hockey ( _everything_ ), but I wasn’t about to let him just have it. He thought he was a shoe in from the get go; scoring on his first shot, in his first game? Whatever, guess who set _that_ up? It was impressive, don’t get me wrong, but I was totally going to beat the shit out of his accomplishments. I thought Savvy was crazy when he put me on a line with Jonny and Bertram. He got a load of shit for it. I guess people still thought I was going to let them down or whatever. That’ll teach them all for doubting me. Except Savvy. And Jonny. Don’t let me make it seem like they were the only ones who trusted that I could hold my own. Still. When you’re the only woman on the team, but, still. With a separate room on the road, it can get lonely—really fucking lonely. 

I didn’t think anybody on the team would get it, but Jonny was like, so serious that he scared people off, I guess. I mean, from the moment he walked into the locker room, it was like Adrian and Martin were just keeping the C warm for him. He was going to wear it, and he was totally gonna be one of the great captains. Until then, he was just an awkward Canadian teenager having his first season in the NHL and getting mocked by his teammates. 

The mocking is kind of intense when you’re a rookie. You learn to take it in stride and let it slide right off you. Maybe Jonny didn’t know how to do that, but he’d get this super constipated look on his face and I swear you could visibly see a vein popping on his forehead. He was rooming with Seabs when we were in Chicago, and on the road he was rooming Skille. I guess we’d be sharing if I was a dude, but we used to hang out anyway, in my room. He got a lot of shit for hanging with the girl, which made him genuinely confused and me a little fucked off. I swear to god he used to seriously look at me like he’d forgotten I wasn’t actually a guy. I was fucked off because I was fucking baller on the ice. I was leading the team in points and they still treated me like I was a temporary call-up or something. Hello, first in the draft and the Calder in sight. I think I deserved a little better than the team outcast or something. 

There were some guys who weren’t complete dickshits about me being on the team. They used to take the piss out of me for my height, my hair, my clearly superior skills that they were just afraid of. They stayed away from the girl thing, probably because Jonny would give them the crazy eyes and Adrian or Martin, depending on who was wearing the C that day, would do the “leader” thing and step in.

Jonny’s put downs and jokes were pretty lame and weird, but he was okay at being a friend. I don’t wanna praise him too much ‘cause that guy’s ego soaks up compliments like a sponge, but we would spend hours playing Mario Kart, chilling in my hotel room on the road and watching movies that became increasingly more ridiculous as the year progressed. We still pissed each other off—he tossed water bottles at me like a douche, even though it was my room, and he used to get pissed off at me for rapping, even though it was my room, because I enjoy being a pain in his ass—but it was good. If I fell asleep before he left, he’d tuck me under the covers and let me sleep. And everyone knew that Jonny had a problem waking up in the mornings, so I changed his ringtone to something obnoxious and called him an hour before time every morning. He complained about it _all the fucking time_ , but I knew he appreciated it. 

I mean, when I won the Calder, because of course I did, he was super nice about me during interviews. Not in the practiced _I’m being nice about you because you’re my teammate and I sort of have to_ kind of way that most people affected in the locker room, but genuine _I hate you because you won instead of me, but I’m proud because we’re kind of connected_ nice. Then I went and gave a speech and forgot him. What a fucking bitch, right? I made up for it in the rally speech, when I went completely above and beyond (if you ask me) and sung his praises to half of Chicago, but it was worth it. Especially when he mocked my taste in plaid shirts (which are awesome for the record) and made out like he was actually going to beat me the next year. It was totally Jonny-speak for: _I love you Trisha Kane; I bow before your ultimate worthiness and the Calder totally belongs to you_.

Okay that’s bullshit, but his mom told me that Jonny couldn’t shut up about me all season, and that’s kinda the same thing, so. It was mostly shit talking and claiming that he was totally better than me, but we both know the truth. One of us has the Calder and the other doesn’t. (He deserved it as much as I did, but I will never admit that to anyone ever. Maybe.)

\---

So that summer was pretty fucking weird. It’s not like Jonny and I were joined at the hip or whatever, but we’d been hanging out on the road and in Chicago. Especially ‘cause Jonny liked to avoid Duncs and Seabs and what he described as their “weekend love-ins”. I sort of think a guy who thinks sitting on someone’s head and calling them a fatty is a great put down has no room to judge other people, but there you go. Anyway, Jonny and I hung out a lot, and by the time we were going back home for the summer, it totally made sense to like, text and shit. And I’m not talking an occasional text now and then to see how the summer’s going. This was more like texting me dumb shit every day because he was bored. We were bored. Except _my_ jokes weren’t terrible, and I didn’t spend every day worrying that I wasn’t going to get “the C.” Hello, he was totally a shoe-in for captain from the moment he was drafted, but Jonathan Toews is sometimes ignorant of his own talent. Not that I’m into singing his praises, but please, as if he _wasn’t_ going to get it.

The point _is_ , that summer he spent half the time bothering me, and the rest of the time searching for a house in Chicago and texting me updates on like, floorboards and windows and shit. He claimed it was because his mother was getting tired of his constant complaining (as if I _wasn’t_ ) and spoke as though I had some personal stake in his curtain drapes, which _what the fuck_. He was a nineteen-year-old dude worrying about what sort of fucking fabric protected him from prying eyes. At first I thought it was Sharpy and Burs playing a dumb prank, but Jonny used to have trouble figuring out what a joke was, much less being capable of participating in one on this kind of scale, so that was out. I ended up asking Seabs, who totally admitted that he’d been “helping” Jonny look, which explained the totally lame excuse for apartment decorating in the photos that Jonny was sending me. Seriously? I was a step away from calling Jonny’s mom and making her like, come down and sort it out, but I wasn't _that_ invested. We were still rookies and I’m like—I wasn’t bothered where Jonny wanted to live is all.

Not that it stopped him from texting me _all the time_.

I was spending the summer with my sisters, so it wasn’t like I was completely alone and in desperate need of his company, but after the third r u there? and sad smiley face, I caved. There’s only so long you can try to ignore what that expression looks like in person before you give in and give him whatever the fuck he wants. I still maintain that’s how he manages to get his way so fucking often, even if Sharpy insists, “that only works on _you_ , Kaner.” 

Obviously my sisters gave me shit about all the texts (and okay, some calls), and there was a painful and embarrassing conversation with my parents about how I was settling into Chicago and if there was anything I wanted to tell them, which, _fuck no_. That was the biggest problem; everyone—including my own damn parents—thought that just because you were a woman in an ocean of men that you couldn’t wait to drop your panties and fuck the nearest forward. If that was true, I’d never be off my back. This is why I have rules. Well, one rule. No fucking teammates. Like, never. Not that I would want to; if you’ve ever seen a dude when he comes off the ice, sweaty and gross, and had to stand next to him for an extended period of time, any ladyboner you got from watching him stick handle disappears under the smell of his not-so-hot bod trying to crowd you in the locker room. No fucking thank you. 

The entire summer I ended up trying to disguise the fact that I was texting him so much, just to avoid the questions. 

“Patricia Kane, you know how I feel about phones at the dinner table.” My mother had always had this thing about family dinners and everyone gathering to talk about their day and shit, which I was usually down for, but seriously, Jonny was having a carpet crisis and apparently my opinion was the cure. Why he couldn’t just rent some apartment and not worry so fucking much about what people had to _walk on_ , I don’t know. 

Sliding my phone back into my pocket with a mom alert: talk soon text, I gave her what I assumed was a sheepish smile (I’m not good at sheepish). “I know, Mom, but Jonny—”

A collective groan went up from my three (awful) sisters, like I spent most of my time talking about Jonny or something. _As if_. 

“Patty,” Erica said. “How many guys are on this team?”

“Jonny,” Jessica cut in, smiling sweetly like I didn’t know what hid behind it. 

Erica laughed and then pretended to check off names on her fingers. “Jonny.” She paused, like an ass. “Jonny.”

“Don’t forget Jonny,” Jackie added with a grin. 

“I hate all of you,” I said, barely resisting the urge to stick out my tongue. Seriously, they were the fucking worst. (They aren’t, really. But sometimes they kind of are. _Sisters_.)

“Girls,” Mom chastised us all. “Jonny is not a valid excuse for texting at the dinner table, Patricia.”

I mumbled something back that was mostly an apology and she nodded. After dinner she told me she had like a million tips for Jonny about house hunting, which no thanks, we’re not about to become Jonathan Toews’ new real estate agents who find him the perfect house. Even if I did accidentally end up telling him anyway. He called super late and I was in bed and _weak_ , okay? Jonny exploits weaknesses. People think he’s such a nice guy, but it’s bullshit. Mostly. 

Anyway, he got his new apartment, I made my mom happy and gave my sisters something new to mock me with, and I got a summer of irritation and annoyance. Except for how it wasn’t really that bad and by the time I was on a plane headed back to Chicago, I couldn’t wait to get back with the guys and start the next season; there was a cup that needed my name on it out there, and this was our year.

\---

So it wasn’t _quite_ our year. So not our year that I was fucked off and irritated as shit with myself and with how we just couldn’t fucking get anywhere. It’s dumb and irrational to think that you’re going to get the Stanley cup two seasons into your career, but seriously. I think you grow up wanting it when you’re in hockey; just the thought of being able to hold it, you know? It didn’t go our way at all.

First, they fired Savvy. I wasn’t expecting it and I know crying and looking that upset on camera did nothing to stop people thinking I was the “weak little woman” they’d all come to suspect. What the fuck ever, they didn’t know me or Savvy. I was upset, yeah, and maybe it wasn’t professional to behave that way when Quenneville was coming in to make things better, but it didn't make it any easier.

Getting into my first fight maybe didn’t help either, but then people needed to stop underestimating me and assuming that just because I’m not a dude, that I couldn’t hold my own on the ice. I'm perfectly capable of checking someone and dealing with the aftermath. I don’t know who I was angrier at when I came off the ice; the dude who checked me into the boards, or Sharpy and Tazer for thinking they had to like, defend me. 

I can be a bitch when I want, and I ended up sulking in the showers and refusing to answer anybody when they asked what was up. Eventually I just told them to leave me the fuck alone. Seriously. Being a woman didn’t give them the right to act like shitheads and pretend that I couldn’t hold my own. They’d seen me. Fuck. I was so mad I left without half of my shit and smacked my bag right into Sharpy as I shouldered it. Served him right. 

Jonny came to find me, because he never knows when the fuck to let go. I don’t think he has any concept of personal space and how I might not want to see his ugly face for five minutes, so of course he showed up at my door like half an hour later, knocking loudly enough to disturb the entire fucking tower. 

“Fuck off.” I slammed the door in his face, but leaned against it, tipping my head back. I could hear him huffing on the other side, the ‘Kaner is being a child again’ sigh I was used to hearing so often. 

“Kaner.” Jonny had the same old monotone as always, but there was something else that I didn’t recognize. “Let me in.”

“Why? You gonna tell me what to do?”

There was a pause before he spoke again. “When have I ever told you what to do?”

“All the fucking time, asshole,” I snapped. “You tell me what to do and where to go and then fight my fucking battles for me. You’re such a _dick_.”

“That's what this is about?” He sounded pissed off which, excuse him, he was the one with the problem, not me. I was just minding my own business, trying to play hockey and he was checking and hitting people when I could do it my own fucking self. 

“Yes, that _is_ what this is about, asshole.” I turned around so that he could have the full force of my anger, never mind that there was still a solid door between us. “I may be a woman, but that doesn't mean you have the right to fight my battles for me, dickface. I made it to the NHL _on my own_.”

There was another pause. “I never said you _didn’t_.”

I rolled my eyes. Sometimes he could be really dense. “You don’t have to. Stepping between me and the world does all the talking for you.”

“Let me in, Kaner,” Jonny said, after another huff of breath, this time more an exhalation of breath than irritation with me. 

I only unlocked the door because I wanted to talk to his face and _tell_ him that he was being an asshole. He was standing on the other side, looking at me with his usual non-expression while his eyebrows did his emoting for him. I’ve been decoding Jonathan Toews’ Emotive Eyebrows since we were rookies, and this was totally the ‘ _I’m sorry I was a dick to you, Kaner, please forgive me_ ’ face. He’s ended up giving me that a lot, I’m not even gonna lie.

I wasn’t going to just roll over and accept the eyebrows as an apology. I didn’t say anything and eventually he did the foot-shuffle thing he does when he’s obviously uncomfortable. “I’m—” He cut himself off and frowned. It was way too painful to watch when he did shit like that, angry at himself for not being able to like, emote or whatever. It’s all bullshit because I _know_ Jonny now and he has emotions and knows how to employ them when he really wants shit, but he was totally just being awkward and weird. “It was—you can take care of yourself.”

“Yes.” I leaned against the counter and stuck my hands in the pockets of my sweatpants. I liked to be comfortable okay? It was totally cool to hang out in sweatpants and a t-shirt. Even better when I didn’t bother with a bra, but that was only okay when Jonny was around. Everyone else would spend way too much time deliberately not looking and it was fucking exhausting rolling my eyes all the time. Jonny and I were bros; it was totally fucking cool to go braless. I always had to have pants on, though, the douche. Anyway. Back to Jonny being a dick in my kitchen. “I can. And you gotta remember that, dude.”

He nodded and agreed, saying something about it being his captainly duty to step in sometimes, which was bullshit. He just wanted to be all macho and ridiculous. He was definitely the second one. “You wanna watch a movie or something?”

It was a really lame attempt to change the subject, but I let it work totally because I wanted to watch a movie and not because I was feeling sorry for how guilty he looked. If I had let him get away with it then, he’d still be doing it now. (Okay, so he does, but that’s besides the point.) Damn straight he should look guilty, he fucked up. “Fine. But you're making your own damn popcorn.”

He smiled at me in that awkward way he does sometimes, but looked relieved. I grinned back because he was really the worst fucking person in the world, but he was also kind of okay. 

It kind of went downhill from there. Shit on the ice was fucking awful and it felt like we were getting nowhere, even while things with the guys were improving. Some dicks made comments of course, because people thought he was like, my protector now that he was captain. It didn’t help that every time someone plowed into me and injured me, he was skating over to give them a dressing down. Which, in Jonny fights, is flailing around like a windmill and looking like an angry Canadian. Seriously, he cannot fight. It’s hilarious to watch him. Not that he didn’t fight for the other guys, because he did, and I’m pretty sure he’d still do it if _I_ had a dick. But he was making things worse by stepping in. I kept the shit most people said to myself because whatever, I didn’t need to validate their shittiness by crying to my captain about it, but some of it hurt, you know?

Obviously I cried to my mom and my sisters, who all told me to punch them in the dicks if they ever did it again. It was nice to hear but not really practical when you’re in the middle of a game. So there was one time when Jonny heard some of the shit that was being said, but only because he’s an impolite douche who doesn’t knock before he enters a fucking room. I was talking to my mom about something one of the guys was shooting his mouth off about on the ice, how I was like, Jonny’s bitch or something, and I looked up to see Jonny standing there, face all angry and rage-filled and I legit thought he was going to run out of the room and scour the entire state of Arizona looking for the asshole who dared like, piss on my honor. 

“I have to call you back,” I said into the phone, and shut it off. “Look, man, I—”

“Kaner.” He said it in that tone that told me I needed to man (heh) the fuck up and explain myself. Whatever. I didn't have to do anything he said. Which of course meant that I spilled everything. 

I glared at him angrily from my side of the bed, just so that he got the point. “This doesn’t mean that you can get even worse about your like, protecting me shit. You’re one of the only people who doesn’t treat me like a girl.”

“But you are,” he said, looking confused. Seriously, who was this guy?

“Yes, thank you, Jonathan, I didn’t notice.” I rolled my eyes. “Look, you’re not like Sharpy, who spends half of his time glaring people down like they’re going to despoil me or run away with me somewhere. And you’re _definitely_ not Duncs, who I swear is going to wrap me up in cotton wool and keep me safe in his trunk one day. You’re just...you.”

He looked confused, like what I was saying made no sense. “You always tell me that I need to stop. So I do. Is that wrong?”

“No, you dick, I’m saying thank you for it or whatever. Just don’t use this as an excuse to start being like them.”

“It’s not—” He shook his head and then sat down on the end of my bed. Sometimes he’d use his captain face on me and this was not one of the times that I would've been okay with it. Thankfully, he just turned around and looked at me with this expression that I’ve never managed to figure out. “It’s not about protecting you. It’s about sportsmanship. Using the fact that you’re, you know,” he waved his hand like a moron, trying to indicate my boobs, “ _you_ against you.”

I shrugged. “Let them.”

“But you end up calling your mom and I don’t know, man, looking upset?” He said the last like he wasn't sure and I sighed. 

“It’s not cool, and yeah sometimes they’re dicks, but you gotta just be you, okay?”

“Okay?” He frowned, and I’m not entirely sure he understood what happened, but he shrugged and dropped it, so it was good.

\---

You know what wasn’t good? Getting arrested the next summer for being a dumb bitch.

I’ve apologized so many times and to so many people for what I did to that cab driver, but that doesn’t mean I don’t regret it. Yeah, the ‘sorry’s’ start to lose their effectiveness somewhere around the tenth time, and the disappointment of everyone around you kind of leaves you feeling like the worst shit around, but it was all deserved. I think it was the first time I’d wished for my phone to just like, fuck off and never bother me. Stan chewed me out in the way only a pseudo father can, and my actual parents would have grounded me forever if they could. Them seeing me in handcuffs—me having to look at them while I was in handcuffs—is a pretty life defining moment, okay? The worst was my grandpa. He refused to see me for the first couple of days after I did it and that fucking hurt, okay? He was like my hero and then he wasn’t interested in dealing with me until I could apologize. I wanted to call someone and cry about it, but it would usually be my family or Jonny. My family were all angry and Jonny wasn’t speaking to me. Yeah, he was the other person giving me the silent treatment. He texted like right after the news broke and told me I was stupid and that he was Super Disappointed (capitalization all mine) and that I should like, seriously consider my behavior if I wanted to best represent the team. It was like his captain voice and nothing was _Jonny_. It wasn’t like he had the right to police how I behaved when I was off the ice, or even up to him to like, rehabilitate me as a functional human being of society, but it kind of had an effect anyway. 

The thing was, Jonny and me, we were kind of a package thing, you know? It pissed us both off for the most part, but on the other hand, it was kind of baller having someone like him be contractually obligated to be your wingman for the rest of ever. Or until one of us was traded. He was my best dude, even if I told that guy one time that it was Burs, but I was just trolling. Jonny’s weird and completely unable to act like a normal human being, but he's fucking hilarious once you understand his weird sense of humor, and he has a completely ridiculous sense of “duty” that borders on insane, but is kind of admirable. He’s just _Jonny_ and upsetting him and my grandpa in one stupid act was like, the _worst_. The “having an arrest record” part wasn’t great either.

Going back to camp in September was the most awkward and uncomfortable few days of my entire existence. (Okay that’s an exaggeration, but it was still awful.) Jonny gave me the cold shoulder even when we were both on the same line, and I tried to stay out of his way for the most part. We’d already done the convention in the summer, and I swear the tension between us was so thick, you could have sliced it with a fucking knife. Sharpy did the “father” thing and tried to reconcile us both, but fuck it, Jonny was still pissed because he can hold a grudge like a motherfucker, and I was fuming because he was _still_ angry. I was arrested, I paid my dues, and I apologized. Even my grandpa was talking to me again. Jonny was just being a dick for the sake of being a dick, and it was really fucking hurtful. Like I didn’t know I was an epic fuck up? Whatever, I was going to show him. This season I would be so off the charts that he’d _have_ to look at me and not look disappointed. 

The first couple of games we played in Finland were when I felt it the most. We’d hang out together on the road, but now he was avoiding me, and that left me with Burs and Sharpy, who were completely overbearing and strange. If I were a guy, we’d probably be awesome bros, but they never completely cut back. It was almost as if they’d go so far and then remember that I was a woman and back the fuck up. Which was clearly not what I wanted. It’s super frustrating, but I learned really fast not to let it bother me and to fight them on it every fucking step of the way. By the time we were back in Chicago and Jonny was still being enough of a dick that he was still keeping out of my way, Sharpy and Burs were finally starting to get it. It made me realize how much time Jonny and I had been spending together, and how that was probably unhealthy and maybe my sisters had been on to something with their teasing at the dinner table. 

When I called to complain about it, Erica just laughed in my face. She was the worst. 

“You’re calling to complain that a guy is showing you attention?”

I rolled my eyes at the ceiling. “Okay, if you’d ever met Jonathan Toews you would not be saying those words to me.”

“I have met him,” Erica pointed out. Obviously I ignored her. 

“Second, ew. Jonny is absolutely not dating material and, besides, I don't date teammates.”

There was a pause where I _knew_ Erica was mentally assessing every team I had ever been on. There was muttering in the background and then Erica said, “Jessica says to remind you about the dude in London. There was a guy in London?”

“No,” I snapped almost immediately. I was going to _kill_ Jessica. “No, there was no ‘guy’ in London, and tell Jessica that I’m going to kick her ass when I get home.”

“That’ll be in months, Patty, and besides, I’ll kick yours for not telling me about the _guy in London_.”

God, having sisters was the fucking _worst_. “For the last time, there was nobody in London. I was like, seventeen.”

“Please, if you think we believe you weren’t getting any action at seventeen, you are sadly mistaken.” A pause. “Okay, Jackie has a point. You were raised away. Maybe you developed wrong.”

“You developed wrong. You’re all fired from being my sisters.”

“As if. You love us all.”

The moment they started making kissy noises down the phone, I hung up. The point was, well _points_ , were that there was no guy in London, and Jonathan Toews was a douchecanoe. I started to expand my friend horizons. I hung out more with the other guys on the team, and overexposure must be balm for the soul or some shit, because they started to treat me less like a weird thing to be accepted but ignored, and more like an actual teammate. You’d think after two seasons they would already, but whatever, it was happening and that was cool for me. Not for Jonny. It was like the longer I spent hanging with other people, the angrier he got. Not that he had a monopoly on me, or had the right to get angry at the guys for not shunning me for my arrest. Seriously, sometimes he had a real fucking problem. I was scoring goals on the same line as him, without him having to say a fucking word. The thing is, we fight _all the time_. We’d grown too used to having full blown-out arguments on the bench about our respective states of plays and to pass the fucking puck and shit like that. Only now it wasn’t any sort of friendly. It was rough and angry and I swear to god, if Sharpy and Seabs didn’t step between us some of the times, we would have gone for each other. He was just _pissing me off_ and I didn’t know how to fix it.

I was fuming in my room after one particular fight during a game. The TV was on low, but I had no idea what was actually playing. There was a knock at my door and I refused to open it; whoever it was could fuck off and leave me alone. After more persistent knocking, I knew it was Jonny. He was the only person who would be clueless enough to keep on knocking after someone’s made a point of not answering. 

“Go away!”

More knocking. 

“I fucking swear, Jonny, I will punch you in the dick.”

“Let me in,” he said. Asshole. “I want to talk to you.”

“You said enough on the bench.”

“I’m sorry.”

“‘Sorry is starting to lose all meaning with you’, Tazer.” Maybe it was unfair to throw back in his face something he’d texted me after my arrest, but I was _hurt_. “I have nothing to say to you.”

“Look,” he started, then paused. “Please let me in. There’s a couple out here and they’re staring at me.”

Good. “No. Say what you have to say and fuck off.”

“Kaner. Patricia.”

Oh, oh no. I was across the room and on the other side of the door before I’d really thought about it. “I swear to fucking—you don’t deserve anything from me, Jonny. Leave me the fuck alone.”

I could practically _hear_ his discomfort. “I’m sorry. Pat, please.”

He said it low and soft like my dad sometimes did and I fucking hated him, but I pulled open the door a little. He was standing on the other side looking awkward and apologetic. 

“I’ve been a dick.”

“Yeah, you have.” I didn't budge an inch. “Anything else?”

“Girls I know don’t—” He stopped himself, then shook his head. “People I know don’t act like you do. You got _arrested_.”

I gave him a withering glare. “Save it for someone that doesn’t know you were drunk and disorderly.” Seriously. His best bro TJ Oshie _peed in an elevator_. He did not have the moral high ground here. 

Shooting me an unimpressed look, he huffed out an impatient sigh. “That was different. I wasn’t the face of a franchise then.”

I was getting sick and tired of hearing that. “That doesn’t give everyone the right to pass judgement on me every single fucking time I make a mistake. It doesn’t give _you_ the right.”

“I know,” he said, eventually. “I’m not—I’m disappointed—”

“Because you have the right? We’re friends, Jonny, and you’re my captain. You’re not my parent.”

His eyes widened a fraction. “Are we? Friends, I mean.”

“Are you spewing feelings just because I’m a girl?” I asked, suspicious.

“What? No.” The look on his face totally said yes. 

“Yes, you moron. We’re friends. Were friends. I don’t even know anymore.” It was the truth. He had no excuses for how he’d treated me. 

He took his hands out of his pockets and looked fifty times more awkward, if that was even possible. “Okay. Well, if you—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said, hauling him into my room by his t-shirt. “Sit the fuck down and stop moping like a tool.”

So things weren’t perfect, but he sat down and did what I said, so it was progress.

You know what else was progress? Making the All-Star game and Olympic camp in the same year. Okay, so I was going to have to play for the women in the Olympics because the IIHL were dicks and refused to mix genders. Seriously, they could do with taking tips from the NHL. I was unhappy about it, and about the fact that I’d miss games, unlike the guys ‘cause we had to ship out first, but we still had half a season and an All-Star game before that. Obviously Jonny and I made the roster because we’re fucking awesome. 

Sharpy pulled me aside when the Olympic rosters were first announced. “Congrats, Peeks.”

Did I mention Sharpy was an asshole? One of his favorite nicknames for me is Peek-a-boo because I’m so short. It was actually Jonny who yelled it one day on the bench, a jibe about my size and about the fact that I could deke around defenders and he was jealous. It’s a terrible reminder of the fact that Jonny and I were fighting at the time, but Sharpy thinks it like, builds character or some shit to be reminded of it. Whatever, like I said, he’s an asshole. 

“Thanks. I totally deserve it.” I grinned. 

Rolling his eyes, Sharpy tossed an arm around my neck. “Think you can manage without any of us there with you?”

He gestured at the entire team. I snorted. “Right, because playing with Julie Chu and Natalie Darwitz is such a step down from you assholes.”

“Still, it’s not me.”

I punched him on the arm. “It wouldn’t be you anyway, dickface. You’re playing for _Canada_.”

“Excuse you,” Sharpy said. “We’re going to wipe the floor with you.”

“With the men,” I informed him with a grin. “It will be a travesty because I’m not on the team.”

“Right.” I don’t think he believed me, but whatever. I knew what I was talking about. If I was allowed to play for the Men’s Team, I’d totally give Team Canada a run for their money. “One, There is no “I” in team, Kaner. Second, Canada is totally better than the USA.”

Jonny let out a dumb cheer from where he was skating around the rink, warming up before everyone else like a tool. “We’d kick your ass.”

That called for action, so I had to totally skate over and show him his place, before Coach Q came out and told Jonny to let me out of the headlock he had me in. (I could have escaped if I wanted to. I let him win.)

Sharpy’s concern, however weirdly expressed, aside, I was kinda nervous about joining the women in Vancouver. (Canada, ugh.) Course, as usual, that all went out the window as soon as I arrived. Meeting up with everyone, especially my main lady, Kelli Stack, I was super stoked for the Olympics shit to begin. In the beginning, it was kinda like the time I moved to Denver when I was a kid and I called my mom up right after to come get me. I called her this time, too, to complain, but she just told me the same thing. Kane’s don’t quit, stop being a baby, do your job, yada-yada. Okay, I’m paraphrasing and she was totally cooler about it, and I got over myself pretty quickly. I was just pissed off because having to play with full face cages? What the fuck was that even about. Some guys go around without visors. Besides, my face is way too awesome to be hidden by a face cage. 

Off the ice, I hung out with Kelli a lot and I’m pretty sure if Julie had been Jonny (thank fuck she wasn’t), both Kelli and I would have been put in time-out or something. Don’t get me wrong, I missed playing in Chicago, but this was the _Olympics_ and I was wearing red, white, and blue and we were gonna show Canada up in their own back yard. Course, even when I was in Vancouver I couldn’t really stop myself.

I called Jonny. 

“So, I’m here,” I said, stretching out on my bed. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen these guys. Julie mocked my hair.”

Jonny hummed. “But you miss me, right? I miss having you and your hair to laugh at in the locker room. Nobody does hot mess quite like you.”

“Fuck you.” I kicked at the duvet, imagining it was Jonny’s face. “My hair is never messy.” (A lie. It totally is unless I spend at least three hours with straighteners.) “I always look fucking spectacular.”

He laughed. I grinned triumphantly at the ceiling; making Jonny laugh like that was rare, and thus kind of a goal of mine. “Whatever you say, Kaner.” 

I let the silence fill the room for a while, and then heard Julie coming back in. It was weird having to room with someone after so long on my own. I ignored her and sighed. “When are you coming out?”

“Next week,” Jonny answered. He paused. “We could hang out?”

“Duh. Your room is clearly going to be lavish and Canadian.”

“I don't think they play favorites, Kaner,” he said. Julie was politely not listening as she sat on the end of her bed, rummaging through her suitcase for something. “Whatever. As long as you’re not rooming with Sidney Crosby.”

Jonny let out a long-suffering sigh. “I don’t know why you have a problem with Sidney.”

“ _Sidney_? Are you developing a crush on him, Jonny?”

Julie’s lip quirked into a smile as Jonny let out an undignified squawk. “It’s called respect, Kaner. Something you’re supposed to have for me.”

“When I see something worth respecting,” I started, cutting off when Jonny cussed me out again. “Wow, that’s not the sort of language I would expect of an NHL _captain_.”

“I hate you,” he said, sulkily. 

“I know.” I smiled into the phone. “So I’ll see you in a week?”

He let out a breath. “I don’t know, I’ve changed my mind.”

I couldn’t stop grinning like an idiot. “Liar. Later, Jonny.”

“Bye, Kaner.”

Julie was watching me with a smile when I hung up my phone and threw it on the bed. “Jonny?”

“Toews,” I offered.

“I figured. Gotta be disappointing not playing against him.”

It kind of was, but it’s not like she wasn’t the same; she was used to captaining Plekanec and Markov, and now she was like me; wearing a full face cage, bemoaning the loss of checking, and having to deal with a whole different style of play. Most of the girls on the US team weren’t drafted to any NHL team, and it had to be weird for them, having those of us who were around. “We’ll be winning a Stanley Cup of our own real soon,” I said.

She gave me a grin that was all edge. “Oh, you will, huh?”

She could crow all she liked; the Canadiens were no match for me and mine. She was right about something: it was disappointing not playing against him. I knew Jonny’s plays inside out. I’d been playing on his wing long enough to know the best ways to get around him if I needed to. Sadly, I would never be able to use that against him in a Olympic game. At least he didn’t have to put up with the shitty women’s rules; it’s fucking hard to play a style of hockey that allows contact, and then have to play for two weeks in a game where that doesn’t happen. Everything about your hockey changes, and I needed to step it up before we took on anyone. 

It was good and I wasn’t ungrateful or anything, but I kinda missed Chicago. I did manage to get my family to come and watch a couple of Jonny’s games with me, just so that we could mock him from a distance. Of course my family screwed it up by being genuinely supportive, but I still managed to throw in a couple of digs, mostly by wearing a TEAM USA shirt. (I threw in a few cheers as well, but whatever.) Of course the media had a field day with that one; exposés about how I was like, pining for the men’s team, or some shit like that. It was sort of true, so I didn’t contest it too hard, but there wasn’t a lot I could do about it. I put my head down and worked hard until I was clutching that silver medal and watching Canada walk away with the gold. It was fucking disappointing, and I had a night of half-celebrating, half-sulking ahead of me (okay, mostly sulking), when Jonny showed up on my doorstep, telling me we were going out. 

That was something else that made the news in hockey world. Mark Lazerus was creaming his pants somewhere about his Chicago Love Story of Choice (he totally trademarked that shit, I swear) coming true. We were just eating out at a restaurant, my silver medal on the outside of my jacket, and Jonny sitting across from me with a shit-eating grin. It wasn’t the best picture ever taken of me, and it wasn’t even like you could read anything into it, but of course people did. 

And of course Pat Brisson, the agent who spent most of his time yelling at me about something, told us we were ignorant shits (not his actual words) for not realizing how the media would take it. Seriously though, I’d been playing on the Hawks for years and they were still adamant that I was going to end up fucking one of my teammates? They didn’t outright ask, of course, because that’s just fucking rude, but it’s easy to tell when they _want_ to.

It’s a pain in the ass. Kinda like Jonny after; he told me not to worry about it, _as if_ , but he’d just won gold for his country. Seriously, how could I not worry about it? It was alright for him, he was a dude. I was the bitch seducing him, distracting him from team goals, and whatever else it was they were saying about us. I was enemy because I was the woman in the men’s world. I think that was the first night I really cried about it. 

Reason the second why teammates were off limits.

\---

We had to go and screw it up at the Stanley Cup Finals. Not winning, obviously. Thanks to me. The game winning goal, not the screwing up. I was half to blame for that. I missed playing with the guys during the Olympics, so when we came back, I was totally going to play the best fucking hockey I could and we’d make it to the playoffs and _not_ crash out. I know that’s like, everyone’s dream, but not everyone actually makes it. When we reached the finals, Jonny screaming in my ear that we were really going, I don’t think I felt it. It wasn’t until we were playing game six in Philly and we were in overtime that it hit me.

Philly are kinda rough and they don’t have any women on their team; they meant business and they weren’t afraid to show it. Especially to me. I think I spent more time hugging the boards in that game than I had my entire NHL career. It was awful, humiliating, and the driving force behind my overtime play. Sinking that puck in the back of the net and knowing that I’d helped bring the Cup home to Chicago after a gap of decades was the sweetest fucking thing I had ever felt. 

The next few hours (days, really) were a haze of happiness, screaming and yelling, family, friends, and booze. Not necessarily in that order. I remember Jonny hugging me on the ice, holding me so tight that my hat fell off and I almost didn’t catch the, “We did it, Kaner. You and me.”

We didn’t think we were the only ones who’d contributed to the Stanley Cup win, but we’d filled those stands up. We’d brought hockey back to a city that had lost hope in its team. I carried that feeling with me for the next few days. I got drunk, of course I did, and there were a few unflattering pictures of me floating around the internet, especially after the parade, but what the fuck ever, we’d won the Stanley Cup and I scored the game winning goal. Plus I totally kept all of my clothes on (mostly), so it was cool. 

The day we cleaned out our lockers, Jonny and I were the last ones left. We were sitting side by side in our usual place and he was holding his jersey in his hands. “Pat?”

I sunk low on the bench, looking around the empty locker room. It always made me feel weird whenever he called me that. I was used to being Trish, Patricia to my mom, and Patty to my sisters. Kaner for hockey. Never Pat. I’d come to consider it Jonny’s, I realized, and it made me uncomfortable enough that I refused to meet his gaze. “What?”

“I meant what I said. We did it.”

“Don’t want all the glory for yourself, huh?” I grinned, but he shook his head, sobering me. “Well, we had a little bit of help.”

It was his turn to smile. “Only a little?”

“Fuck you,” I said, punching him on the thigh. “You know what I mean.”

We sat in silence for a while. “You did good.”

“I don’t need your approval.” I might have been a little more pissed off than normal, but now was not the time to start with that shit. 

“I’d tell you that if you were a dude,” Jonny said, with more vehemence than I was expecting. “Seriously.”

“Sure,” I said, uncertain. I wasn’t a dude, and that was the problem. I turned to really look at him, startled by how close we actually were. It wasn’t like I had never thought about Jonny like that; I meant what I said about hockey players being a complete turn-off after games, but there were also times when it could be a total turn-on. Watching Jonny play hockey, for one. Some of the moves he made were fucking hot, okay? In a hockey porn kind of way. Having a rule doesn’t mean you go blind. It just means you compartmentalize like a boss. 

I was kind of failing to compartmentalize.

So much so that he was looking at me strangely. “Kaner?” 

I composed myself. “What?”

“Do you—” He started, then cut himself off. I had no idea what the fuck was going on, except that our faces were close, he was looking at me like I was the best fucking thing for helping make his Stanley Cup dreams come true, and that right then, I found Jonathan Toews hot as fuck.

This made for my next terrible life choice; I don’t know which of us moved first, except that we were kissing, his hand on the back of my head, and mine fisted in his shirt. It was a terrible first kiss, teeth clashing and noses bumping, but it was also fucking awesome. He tilted my head, deepening the kiss, and I might have let out a noise at some point that I’d never fucking admit to.

That noise kind of did it for me. I pulled away, turning my face and running a hand through my hair. I hoped I wasn’t going to have to be that bitch that cut and run, but when I risked a glance, he looked just as awkward as I did. 

“Uh,” I said.

“Look,” he started at the same time. 

God, this was weird as shit. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Me either.”

And that, apparently, was that.

\---

You wouldn’t think that almost making out with your captain in the team locker room would be something you could easily sweep under the rug, but you obviously don’t know me and Jonny. He fucked off to Canada and got a lake named after him, I ran away to Buffalo, got stuck in a fire truck, got soaked, and by the time we made it to the Hawks convention during the summer, we’d had sufficient time away from each other to come to the conclusion that the kiss had Never Happened.

I am a pro at making awkward things seem less awkward. Erica thinks it’s because I was born without a shame gene, but what does she know. (I told them about the whole kiss thing as soon as I got home and their reactions ranged from excited (Jackie) to worried (Erica) to sympathetic (Jessica). My dad told me to stick to my rule and focus on hockey, while my Mom sat me down and told me not to, “let Jonathan lead you into anything you don’t want to.” As if Jonny wouldn’t be the perfect gentleman. Pretty sure most people would be warning _him_. Maybe his mom was. God, what if—) 

Anyway, awkward things being less awkward. The kiss was as good as erased by the time we started the next season. We went back to being linemates and occasional road roommates when he’d invade my privacy and hang out with me. Except for the times when shit would get tense and weird, we were totally cool around each other. He’d still come over to my condo and complain while I kicked his ass at Mario Kart. For the first time in ever, he asked me to put on a bra when he came around, but it was my fucking apartment, so I told him to fuck off. A couple of hours and games of Mario Kart later, and he was too busy cursing me and trying to wrestle me into submission to worry about what kind of support I was (or wasn’t) wearing. 

The start of the season sucked a lot. We lost a lot of the guys we’d spent three years with; Brouwer, Soupy, and Buff. Steeger, Laddy, and Niemi. And Burs. I swear I saw Sharpy weeping in the bathroom at one point. It was like everything changed; there were new guys to get accustomed to, some whom had played with women before, some whom hadn’t, and both Jonny and I had enough distractions to help forget about our locker room mishap.

There was a ton of expectation on us to be great in the new season, which we sort of were, but not exceptionally so. I didn’t manage another 80 point season, but I still did fucking baller. I was playing great hockey, and thanks to the Stanley Cup win, and my awesome goal, people around Chicago were starting to take notice. I wasn’t just the trophy woman on the team, I was a flesh and blood player who’d sweat blood and tears to do it again. I have to admit that it was kinda nice to go out to a club with the guys and get action. Despite Sharpy’s claims that I have no game, I’m great at picking up, thank you. Unfortunately, when you’re a woman, it gets you publicity, and not the good kind. It didn’t matter if I slept with one guy or five, I needed to calm it down and “focus”. There were guys on the team sleeping with far more girls than I was dudes, but of course I was the one singled out. 

I ranted to Jonny about that one, splayed out on his couch while he cooked us both pasta. “Why is that even allowed? I don’t sleep around.”

Jonny snorted. Was he even paying attention? “You’d be labelled the same if you were a dude, Kaner.”

“The hell I would.” I glared at him from the couch. “I’m a slut because I have a vag and you know it.”

“Trish,” Jonny said, cutting himself off. “You know I don’t think that way.” He turned to me with a frown. “It’s shitty. Get your feet off my fucking couch.”

“Dude,” I said, deliberately burrowing my feet under the arm. “It’s not just shitty. I should be able to sleep with whoever the fuck I want to. However many times I want to.”

There was an odd look on his face. “Yes, you should. Why are we still talking about this?”

I made an exaggerated betrayed face. “You’re supposed to be my best bro, Tazer. You’re supposed to _care_.”

He sighed. “I care. I’d care more if you got your feet off the couch and ate something.”

“Fine,” I sighed, standing. “But seriously. If I don’t want to settle down at twenty-four, why should I have to? It’s like people think I should be settling down with kids by now.”

“But you play hockey,” Jonny said, looking as confused as I did. 

I nodded. Finally. “Right? No time for babies.”

“Absolutely not.” Jonny’s tone had a note of finality to it that sounded really fucking good to me. I wasn’t discounting babies ever. Just not right then. Of course, then Abby Sharp had to go and give birth to Maddy. 

Maddy was like, my best girl. She was the balm to a shitty summer (recuperation from a wrist-injury) and a shitty start to the season (catching up on training missed because of my wrist injury). The first time Sharpy and Abby introduced her to us during a team get together at theirs, I was in love. She was the cutest and I was totally her favorite, no matter what Jonny says. 

It was only when I was holding her, when she was cooing at me and playing with my fingers, that I let myself think that one day, I wanted it. Obviously not while I was playing hockey, not while my career was still good, but. That didn’t mean I wasn’t allowed to consider babies as a valid life choice. 

“You realize you can have babies _while_ you play hockey, right?” Jessica asked, when I called her after another Maddy day. 

“Yes,” I lied. “I’m just saying.”

Jessica’s, “Patty,” had the air of someone placating a younger child. Sometimes I don’t think they realize I'm the oldest. “Loads of hockey players have kids.”

“Most of them aren’t women,” I pointed out. “Besides, what kind of dude would want to raise kids?”

There was a long pause. It was mostly a rhetorical question, so I was surprised when she said, “Jonny would.”

I snorted. “God, he really would. He’d be the doting dad. Have I told you how fucking awful he is with kids? I hate it.”

“Sure you do,” Jessica laughed. “He’d be the perfect father.”

I frowned down at my phone. “Not to mine.”

“Patty—”

“God,” I groaned. Seriously. “You realize we’re not actually dating, right? I have my team—”

“—mate rule, yes I know. Pretty sure if you tell yourself hard enough, you’ll believe it, Patty.”

My teammate rule couldn’t be broken. Not for anyone.

\---

The thing is, crashing out of the playoffs twice in a row isn’t cool for anyone. It fucking sucked. Worse, not getting past the first round and having to put up with your dick of a best friend getting a concussion, lying about it, crashing his car into a pole, and then missing half a season kind of screws you up a little bit. Add that to the shitty end of a fucking awful season where I had no idea what the hell I was doing most of the time, but did it because I was sent there, rumours of a lockout, and Jonny dating some girl who was beautiful, appealing, and everything I wasn’t and well. Ugh, not that I cared _like that_. But she was just. It was all just starting to suck hardcore, that’s all. Worse even than those first days in my rookie season, and I was tempted when a dude I know called and asked if I wanted to spend the weekend in Madison. Instead, I decided to run away to Buffalo and hide. ‘Hiding’ in this case meant buying a huge house that was waaaay too big for just me and sulking in it for two weeks.

My family came to see it and gave me unnecessary opinions on everything from the decor (much better than Jonny’s attempts of that first summer, thanks), the fact that I had four televisions but nothing else (again, necessaries), and that I had a deck and a boat. Yeah, I was living the high life, except for how that fucking loneliness was getting worse. 

Not that I was going to cry to my parents this time. 

To say that I internet stalked Jonny would be a little creepy. I merely...caught up on Hawks gossip. I knew that Sharpy was in Worlds, kicking ass, that Maddy was growing, courtesy of photo updates from Abby, and that Jonny was apparently dating for real. Like, actual go-karting dates. 

_u never take me go-karting :(_ I texted in one of my weaker moments, curled up on the couch with ice cream and _The Proposal_ playing. I have needs just like every other woman on the planet, and sometimes that's to drown your sorrows with frozen goods and a romcom. 

He called. “What the fuck, Kaner?”

“I could date if I wanted to,” I informed him, staring down at the ice cream. Was there something in that shit that made you lose your filter? 

“Are you drinking?”

I held up the tub of ice cream. “Not unless Ben and Jerry’s has suddenly acquired alcohol.”

There was significant pause that I probably should have been concerned with. “Are you watching _The Proposal_?”

I looked up at the screen where Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds were kissing. “Um, no?”

A muffled curse. “Who broke up with you?”

“Nobody. I’m not even seeing anybody.”

Jonny sounded confused. “So why the ice cream?”

Okay, seriously. He was way too invested in what I was choosing to eat. “Why do you care? And how did you know what I was watching?”

“You only ever watch _The Proposal_ when somebody’s dumped you, and you break out the Phish Food at the same time.”

That...is based on fact, I guess. So a couple of times my “steady” boyfriends, who were totally not settling down material, but I tried anyway, dumped me and I ended up crashing at Jonny’s with ice cream, a movie, and a comforter stolen from his bed. He usually relaxed his always-wear-a-bra policy in his apartment at those times. “Whatever. I haven’t been dumped.”

“Okay.” 

It clearly wasn’t okay judging by the fact that he turned up on my doorstep two days later with a duffle and a determined expression that translated into him reaching through the doorway and pulling me into a hug. It was awkward and stiff because a) neither of us was drunk, and second, it was Jonny. Still. It was kind of...nice? 

He pulled away and looked at me. “You gonna let me in?”

I threw open the door and gestured at the house. “Welcome to Chez Kaner.” I gave him the grand tour, letting him toss his bag in one of the guest rooms, and making sure we ended up in the kitchen. “You want something to drink?”

“Sure.” He leaned on the counter, watching me as I grabbed two Gatorades from the fridge. He looked tanned already, the fucker, and I burned with envy. Some people were naturally gifted at browning under the sun. I just went red and peeled. Sexy. 

I sat on one of the stools and gave him a pointed look. “Why are you here, Tazer?”

“I think we need to talk.”

“Talk.” What the hell was there to talk about? “Why?”

Jonny isn’t all that hard to figure out. Most of the time his face, if you know where to look, will give him away. Like then. He was nervous about something, even while he was glaring at my ignorance. My supposed ignorance. I knew what was up. Mostly. “Why were you eating ice cream if you haven’t broken up with anyone?”

“You’re way too concerned with my eating habits, dude.” I wasn’t in the mood for whatever he was trying to say. Jonny coming was supposed to be cool; I’d been trying to get him to Buffalo for like, ever. He wasn’t supposed to interrogate me about my feelings. “I just was.”

He rounded the island and I turned to follow, until he came to a stop right in front of me. “You’re an idiot.”

I bristled at that, tilting my chin up like I was trying to defend myself. “What the fuck, man. You can’t just—”

“ _Pat_.” God, I wished he’d stop saying my name like that. “You know why I came.”

I did. I didn’t fucking want to, but I did. “You can’t. I don’t—not teammates, Jonny.”

Jonny was standing way too fucking close, but I didn’t want him to leave. It was like our entire relationship and I just wanted—I wanted him, but it was bad idea. It had already _been_ a bad idea. 

“We tried it—”

“We kissed once and pretended we hadn’t,” Jonny said.

“Listen, I don’t date teammates because it gets fucking dirty, and I don’t wanna have to deal with that shit if things go wrong.”

It wasn’t about me not wanting him, or not believing that he wanted me. It was self-preservation. I just didn’t want to have to be the bitch who broke the hockey star’s heart, and why couldn’t he understand that?

“I’d never—”

“Fuck you. Don’t even finish that, asshole.”

Nobody could promise that they wouldn’t be a future asshole, or leave me, or what the fuck ever. 

“Hey.” Jonny came to sit next to me, resting his arms on the countertop. “Let me try, eh?”

“You gonna woo me, Jonny?” I rolled my eyes. This wasn’t like those period dramas my grandpa and Erica liked, where the dude came and swept the lady off her feet. Jonny was so not the type of guy who that one British author lady that everyone seemed to love so much wrote about. He was the guy that spent way too fucking long analyzing game film and making unnecessary spreadsheets about stats and shit. He was the guy who threw water bottles across a room that he _wasn’t even sleeping in_ and complained when they weren’t picked up. He was the guy you kissed in a locker room and pretended you didn’t just because it was safer. 

“Yeah,” he said, sitting back with an expression like he’d already won. “But I don’t think I need to.”

Cocky as shit, but totally fucking right. Jonny wasn’t the safe option by anyone’s standards, but then again, when I had ever done something just because it was _safe_? Still, making him work for it was going to be fun, so who was I to stop him?

\---

When Jonny tells you that he’s going to woo you, he doesn’t mean the shitty kind of wooing where guys decide they've made enough of an effort after like, one date. He was a fucking gentleman about it; always holding open doors for me (ironic, considering our first meeting), driving me around in my car (I don’t like driving, so it wasn’t that big of a thing) and pulling out chairs and shit. I’d have been offended, but after the fifth date, he sort of forgot to do some of that stuff and went right back to criticizing everything about me, from my clothes to however I’d chosen to wear my hair. I’d cut it after the playoffs, because it was the summer and I think if my mom had to see my mullet (shut the fuck up man, my playoff mullet was a beast) for much longer, she’d shave it off herself. On dates I shoved it up, but this one time I’d done it with hairpins and what I swear was half a can of hairspray, and his expression was one I’ve never quite figured out. He went on to mock it, especially the fading streaks of red, white, and blue. He just couldn’t handle the fact that my country pride extended past the Olympics. (Not that I was bitter.)

We kind of spoiled the whole ‘date’ atmosphere by going back to mine and playing video games until losing became too much for Jonny and he threw his controller across the room, then wrestled me to the ground. Nobody sucks at video games quite like he does. Still, all in all he was doing pretty well; he wasn’t being a complete man about everything, which I kinda of liked because you know, gender stereotypes. It’s what I’ve always loved about him, not that I was attaching the L word to us then or whatever. 

Course, then he started up with the staring. At my mouth. You know that song, Hungry Eyes? That was Jonny. All. The. Time. It kind of reminded me of something Burs told me ages ago. It’s not like he had the excuse of being drunk or anything; we’d just finished morning skate, where I’d spent most of the time being a shit to Jonny. In retaliation he smacked me in the back of the legs with his towel and then ducked into the bathroom because he was a loser who couldn’t take whatever I would have dished out. Burs was watching us way too fucking closely and I snapped, “What?”

“He’d totally bang you if he could, you know that right?”

I stared at him. What the fuck? “What are you talking about?”

“Tazer, man.” Burs tugged on his sneakers and shrugged. “He totally wants in your hot pink panties.”

“They’re not pink,” I said, because _what the fuck_.

Sharpy butted in then, telling Adam to shut the fuck up and pulling me aside to give me the talk about inappropriateness in the locker room and coming to him if I needed him or whatever bullshit protectiveness he was trying to give in to, but I was still hung up on the whole _Tazer wanting to bang me thing_.

Jonny was totally awesome about everything, and I never figured out whether Burs was serious or just being a shit, but sitting on my couch, seeing the way Jonny was looking at me, I realized he’d _always_ looked at me like that. Nobody else looked at me the way Jonny did, and not out of like embarrassment or anything else. It was hot. It got better when he started touching me; he’d get real handsy, shoving up my shirt, and stroking my hair and whatever. It was super intense, like everything else Jonny did, but it was also fucking awesome. 

He’d get this serious expression on his face and tell me that he wanted to kiss me. 

He wouldn’t do anything, just tell me and then go right back to watching TV. What the fuck even. Jonathan Toews is just something else. 

It wasn’t the touchy feely shit that was getting to me—there was a reason Sharpy, Duncs and Seabs mocked us for being co-dependent freaks, after all—but something about it was different. Not in the whole, harlequin romance kind of way where his touches suddenly became sensual and I was _swept off my feet_ or anything. When I look back over all the shit we’ve been through, the way Jonny’s always acted around me hasn’t ever changed; nothing about us has changed. It felt like a natural progression; from having a door slammed in my face by some douchecanoe I didn’t know, to curling up on the couch with the very same dude and having him tell me that he wanted to kiss me. I was still me, and he was still Jonny—ridiculous, dorky, and a fucking loser—but it was better. You know, with eventual kissing on the agenda. 

So, of course, he had to go and fucking ruin it. 

Not in a terrible way, but in an _I always have to overachieve_ kind of way. We were sitting by the lake, and he was honest to god fishing. Just sitting on my deck like he fucking belonged there, _fishing_. I was dipping my toes in the water, leaning back against his legs. I tipped my head back and grinned up at him. “Hey.”

He rolled his eyes and pretended to check out his fishing line. I know he was pretending, because he’d checked it like five minutes before. 

“Jonny,” I whined, kicking my feet a little harder.

He scowled. “What? I’m fishing.”

“But you promised me kisses,” I said, flashing him a smile. 

“What?” He leaned forward. “But—”

I sighed over-dramatically. “Don’t tell me you’re looking this gift horse in the mouth, Captain Toews?”

“Don’t call me Captain,” Jonny said reflexively, and then grinned. “Come up here, then.”

That was just like him, making me do all the work. “No, asshole, you come down here.”

He did. He slid down onto the grass next to me, and threaded a hand into my hair. It was still long enough for him to get a good handful and tilt my head back. I went willingly, because what the fuck ever, I wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to _finally_ kiss him. I met him halfway, pressing a bruising kiss to his lips, and he pressed back just as hard, if not more. He had a hand on my waist, fingers teasing skin as he skimmed them up my sides. He smelt of fresh air and coffee and _Jonny_. It was intoxicating, the way he was biting at my bottom lip, the way he fought back against my tongue and teeth. The kiss, like everything else about us, was a battle that was worth every fucking second to fight. 

The kiss would have been fucking perfect on its own, but never let it be said that Jonny’s like, an underachiever. He smirked at me, said, “I’ll show _you_ a gift horse,” and reached for my bikini bottoms.

\---

We had a lot of sex that summer.

Obviously we did shit like work out and hang out with family and whatever. But there was a lot of sex. I was surprised that it wasn’t different; I’d always had this rule about not fucking teammates because I thought it wrecked shit, or would make it awkward and confusing, but it didn’t. He was still a giant dork and my sisters still gave me shit, but I got more sex. On reflection, that’s pretty fucking great. I kind of love it. And him. It’s not perfect, but it’s us.

We weren’t exactly making out in the locker room or anything, but it wasn’t like Jonny did much at all to hide our relationship in front of our teammates. His protectiveness reached almost ridiculous levels after we started sleeping together, but I put a stop to that _fast_. The fact that he listened was hotter to me than anything, and as soon as he nodded, hands resting awkwardly on my hips like he wasn’t sure he was allowed, I pushed him back against the wall and leaned up to kiss him. He reciprocated with enthusiasm, and pretty soon he was running his hands underneath my top. 

“You never treat me like a _girl_ ,” I said between kisses, on tiptoe because I’m still short compared to him, but pressed up against him, close and hot. 

He didn't look at me like I was crazy, or wrong, or stupid. He looked at me with this dumb smile on his face, the smile that I liked to think was just mine, but there was still a little confusion there. “Is that bad?”

“No, you asshole. I like it.”

“Good.” Jonny sounded certain this time, more _confident_. He searched my face and then leaned in for another kiss, brushing his lips against mine. “You’re not—you’re just _Pat_ to me. A pain in the ass, someone who drives me fucking crazy a lot of the time.” He grinned at me. “But I love you.”

My smile was so wide I swear it must have split my face. I loved him too, everything from his stupid intensity on the ice, to his complete inability to handle a challenge, to the way he looked when he was kissing me, or fucking me, or just cuddling with me. When I told him, fisting his shirt in my hands and kissing his jaw, he grinned against my mouth and it felt like the first time I’d taken to the ice; equal parts scary, exhilarating, and knowing that this was for the long haul.


End file.
